1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to viewing of Internet content, and more particularly concerns to novel server-client distributed processing of Internet and World Wide Web content to scalable forms for resolution-independent rendering and zoom- and pan-enabling the display of Web content.
2. Description of the Related Art
Text only Internet information browsers began as a project at the CERN, European Organization for Nuclear Research, facility in Geneva Switzerland. From its inception the intent was to provide a mesh or web of access to data with a common user interface. Browsers moved from the academic environment when NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign developed Mosaic, an Internet information browser and World Wide Web client.
Internet content is stored in multiple file formats. These formats include HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and XML (eXtended Markup Language) as well as graphic file format GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). These four file formats constitute the majority of Internet content. Font size and resizing display area for content can alter the size of the display of Internet content in existing browsers. The majority of Internet content displays as a flat single resolution with no browser support for zoom.
Much of the Internet content has been designed for display on desktop computers with a single target resolution. Even though HTML has the ability to adapt to changes in screen resolution, major Internet content providers have chosen to create their Web pages using fixed resolution structures, such as tables. This gives them the ability to control the look and feel of their Web sites. This fixed resolution approach has evolved to the point that the fixed resolution layout of Web pages has become the most common method to brand or uniquely identify Web sites. While this fixed resolution approach is good for site branding and product differentiation it does present a daunting technical problem for display of Internet content (designed for desktop computers) on small screen, low resolution, or different aspect ratio devices, such as cell phones and hand held computers.